Monday, October 1, 2012

These Days, Fall, 2012

My new kitten has a perfect butterfly patch on her back. I named her Mina Perhonen. Perhonen is the Finnish word for butterfly, and Mina Perhonen is the Japanese fashion-textile company that always catches my eye.

A few last tomatoes dangle from the row of discarded walkers turned into tomato supports in Harry's garden.

It's an uphill, downhill, sideways hill scramble to get into this small, secluded sandstone rock shelter.
We like to come here every year, especially to see this row of petroglyph stick people, who seem to be holding hands. They may be 1500 years old. Someone may have crouched in the sand, right where I am crouching, making this design, 1500 years ago.

There are many more recent carvings here, the most recent since I was here last says Adam Eve. It is a federal offense to carve into ancient petroglyph panels, but many people don't understand this.
I'm always afraid, the next time we come, someone will have carved over them, or hammered them away.

On the other hand, thinking of image obliteration, an elderly Spanish woman who felt the call to remake a religious fresco, brightened my day. It's no secret that the history of art is a history of men's art, and no art more represented than religious art. There's a boatload of other religious paintings like the deteriorating, unremarkable, fresco that the 80 year old woman named Celia Gimenez felt a need to add her brush to. She was not trying to ruin the work, but felt an artistic impulse to add her own expression to history. Truly, she lacked skill, but I believe her artistic intentions were pure.

Which reminds me of the young Russian women in the punk band, Pussy Riot, who took on Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church, for their collusion to marry religion to state power. Wearing neon balaclavas, singing and dancing, at the altar, they implored the Virgin Mary to chase Putin out of her church. Women artists making big noise, making big waves, makes me feel hope.

4 comments:

wonderful post! Love the petroglyphs. Some years back we were camping in Wisconsin near some petroglyphs and I remember feeling such awe as I laid my hand on the same rock wall that a thousand years ago someone else sat and painted the symbols there. Art should be forever.

the petroglyphs are wondrous! Have you seen Herzog's film, 'The Cave of Forgotten Dreams' ? If not, seek it out....it is awesome. I went to see it at the cinema, but it is now out on dvd. I love the colour-connections of your post too! Very autumnal; and nice pumpkin. Mine were all eaten by slugs this year. We've had the wettest summer for 100 years, here in England. So all my garden produce rotted, or was eaten by slugs & snails. And yes; 'free pussy riot' indeed! Jan

Karen, I also wonder what these images meant to the people who made them. What were their thoughts?

Jan, I think this should have been 3 posts, but I couldn't go on without adding my words to the outrage against the punishment of women artists (!) challenging the powers that control their lives. I want to be one voice in the cloud of mosquitoes stinging Putin and his rotten election